The Chronicles of a Happy Life

Simply can’t manage to. I watched a lot of episodes of ‘Lost’ today. Really interesting stuff. Hats off to the people behind it for doing such a truly different show. For the past two hours I’ve been surfing the net - reading blogs mostly.

Here’s a nice link- saw it on Sanyam’s blog

The thing is.. I have a Linear Algebra exam tomorrow and I don’t feel like studying at all. It’s funny how one always discovers interesting things to do immediately before or doing the exams and is usually devoid of ideas when there is a lot of time at hand. Just one of the many little ironies of life. *sigh*

Yesterday, I was just wondering about the paucity of ‘completely useless, ridiculous, creative, spam mails’ to my batch yesterday, when ORB (I need time to think of some creative teasing name for him :D) decided to CTRL-X to the ocassion. The replies came quickly - as people, with the knowledge of ‘Philosophy of Human Desires’ fresh in their minds responded. Along with much leg-pulling of our batch topper Romeo, the idea of a Quake tourney was mooted. I hope it does go through.. I used to play a lot of Quake earlier. Then, I installed SP2 and it stopped working on my PC. Most people had anyway lost interest in it and moved on to CZ. In the first tourney, I didn’t even get through the first round.. I had only started playing then… But that only means that I can only improve this time :D

Just saw this in a friends blog. Though, I must be among the most non-senti people in my batch (am I?), I just had to link to it. Waiting for comments…

I’ve been watching a lot of ‘The Apprentice’ lately and I love it.

Not only is ‘The Apprentice’ a great show but there’s also something about big business that makes me excited. It sets my pulse racing and puts me in a totally different place. I guess this is what sport does to some people. I’ve never been excited about sport not even when it was the world-cup semi-final between India and Pakistan (my friends forced me to watch it) or even the India-Australia final (I didn’t watch more than a few overs of that) but I wouldn’t miss an episode of ‘The Apprentice’ for anything. In my world, Shah Rukh Khan, Brad Pitt and even Sachin Tendulkar are just the extras; Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Dhirubhai Ambani and others are the true stars!

In some ways this crazy passion for business is silly. Some people even think I’m crazy because I don’t have an interest in any sport… ‘How do you show your patriotism?’, one of my friends innocently asked me when he learnt that I simply didn’t watch cricket. I just don’t get it! For me, cheering when Reliance steps forward to become the first private Indian company in the Fortune 500 is patriotism. India becoming the nation with the fourth largest GDP in terms of purchasing power parity is a much huger achievement to my mind that it winning the world-cup or a hundred Olympic medals.

On the other hand, this is a good thing. After all, not many people in this world can actually continue to play the sport they adore. Even those who do, certainly can not when they are old men and women. But Inshallah, I can indulge in my favorite sport if I get the opportunity. We’ll see who has the dull life then :P

A few things I learnt over the past four days

1) Not all volunteers are voluntary! Sometimes your name appears first in the list of volunteers just because a particular friend thinks that he can force you to work when you don’t want to. Even more strangely, he is right.
2) Do not eat out on the day before an exam… even when it is free, delicious and non-vegetarian. If you do it once, for heaven’s sake, don’t do it again on the same day… and if you do, at least don’t read Agatha Christie at night.
3) Three hours is a lot of time without a PC nearby, even when you are with eight friends, a car, a bike and lots of money.
4) A pub is a really good place to chill out… even if you only sip water, especially if it involves watching Formula 1 with an expert beside you and sitting on a really, really comfortable couch.

The day after tomorrow is my first (since I started preparation) all-India mock CAT. It’s so weird that when I wrote my first mock in November last year, I wasn’t prepared at all and yet I managed to get an All India Rank of 82 and now that I’ve actually started CAT prep, that number appears a distant dream. CAT prep totally sucks. Why the institution with the brightest brains in Indian management would subject its admission candidates to questions on high-school Math and mental math is beyond me. DI is even more of a joke. I’m sure none of those questions vex the mind of modern day managers, equipped as they are with modern day computers. Anyway, the thing that sucks most about CAT prep is the seriousness with which people take it. It’s been three years since I last wrote a serious exam and I had become accustomed to that fact. Now, when friends who for the past three years, had on the subject of studies, only told me, if anything, to study less wonder why I’m not getting good marks and inquire if I’m studying enough; it rattles me a bit. I suppose I’ll just have to get used to it.

Wish me luck.

I noticed that I’d missed out on posting quite a few reviews, so here they are.

Movies

K-Pax - Awesome movie! No big guns, not even a helicopter and not even complicated computer graphics but it still is the best sci-fi movie I’ve seen in a long time. Kevin Spacey’s acting is great.

Clockstoppers - Yet another Teen movie… The science was so wrong in so many ways that I’m sure if Einstein was buried, he’s spinning like a top in his grave.

A Walk To Remember - I’m sick of teen movies :( Watch it only if you are a big fan of Mandy Moore or a senti teen!

Terminator 3 - First they send a metal Arnold Schwarzenegger as the terminator. Then they send a liquid metal prototype that can turn into anything it touches. Finally, they send a woman. Is there a message in there somewhere? >:)

T2 was better than T1 and they should have stopped at that. Of course, who can blame them from succumbing to the temptation of making millions of dollars :D

The Sweetest Thing - I couldn’t put it better than this Likeable if you like movies with great chicks and nothing else.

Bridget Jones - The Edge of Reason - It started out in a dull way but was entertaining overall. Watch it if you are in a good mood.

Books

The Code Book - I really liked this one. I’ve had an interest in codes and code-breaking right from childhood. I remember that in school, we used to form gangs and write messages in code to each other! We even ‘invented’ our own codes and ways to break them. Of course, they were nothing very complicated and could be broken by just searching for names in the messages ;) In IIIT, I really wanted to take the Cryptography course in my 3rd year first sem but I had already maxed out my credits - I took 28 credits that sem! - so my ‘quest for knowledge’ was fulfilled only when I got my hands on this masterpiece. After that I didn’t find the course offered here very attractive and so I didn’t take it after all.

Losing my Virginity - Among the best books I’ve ever read. This is a must-read for every would-be entrepreneur or just interested in business. It also made me frustoo on reading that he had started a national magazine at 15 while I’m here slogging away to get a meaningless degree at 20.. Ah well, more about that in a later post. *sigh*

An American Brat - I read this non-stop on the train from Hyderabad to Mumbai. It’s about a religious Parsee girl from Pakistan who goes to America on a holiday. A nice book to read on the train.

Cat among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie rocks. It’s a pity that I didn’t read much of her work in my school days - I was afraid of the ‘hi-fi’ English. I also liked her ‘The Body in the Library‘ I remember that when I discovered it in the library, it was too late to get it issued, so I read it non-stop there itself :D

It’s weird but I sometimes wish I were English. I love books by English writers - Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse. I like English movies and their comic serials way more than their Hindi counterparts. My favorite sweets are also cake and chocolates! I like so many other things about the English people and their way of life. For instance, they are very close to nature. Mrs. Marathe once said that most English people would be able to tell you the name of lots of plants and animals they see around them. I’ve heard only praise about their politeness, their good civic sense and their strong sense of justice. Of course, I must confess that all of this is hearsay and I’m not really sure of how Brits really are like.

What a weird thing to say.. and that too on 15th August :”>. Not that I’m saying that India is bad. ‘apna desh’ is still ‘apna desh’. Happy Independence Day everybody. Jai Hind!

I’ve recently had a few discussions with different people for different reasons on this subject. This post is my point of view.

Trust is a strange thing. First, it is relative, i.e. it cannot be talked about in absolute terms. Second, its relative in two ‘dimensions’! You can’t even say that you trust person X more than person Y without specifying a context. For instance, there are people, I can trust to keep my secrets, but I wouldn’t trust them to help me when I’m in a soup and then there are people I can trust to go out of their way to help me, but who cannot be trusted to be responsible for the simplest of things. Trust is also the most important factor in any relationship. Take that out and everything else crumbles.

On the other hand, trust in humanity can be compared from person to person irrespective of context. In my experience, it has always been beneficial to believe that deep down, every human being is good at heart and means well. They may not always act in your best interests or speak the truth all the time, but such deviations have strong reasons behind them. Distrusting people in the absence of any motive is paranoia. Paranoia is the anti-thesis of living the happy life. Trust me, ‘Trust nobody but yourself’ makes sense only in thriller movies. Trust people, stay happy.

I guess this is what 3 years at IIIT does to you.

(P.S. - Windows/M$ lovers can take the test too.. its not biased against us :D)
(Yeah, I admire M$ specifically because of the $)